Sound Advice

The Flyer's music writers tell you where you can go.

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Local rock band Breaking Point will celebrate the release of their recent album Beautiful Disorder at the New Daisy Theatre Thursday, June 9th. Released on the Creed-connected Wind-Up label, its a long-in-coming follow-up to their 2001 Wind-Up debut, Coming of Age. Despite the Creed connection, Breaking Point doesnt really sound much like those platinum Promise Keepers. Like Creed, Breaking Point is a post-grunge, heavy modern-rock band, but their sound is rooted more in the straight-ahead rock of fellow Southerners 3 Doors Down (whose debut album Breaking Point guitarist Justin Rimer worked on while an employee at Ardent Studios), but with metal and new-wave tinges that make Breaking Point a more versatile band. Breaking Point share the bill at the New Daisy with Theory of a Deadman and Submersed.

One of contemporary blues most ferocious road warriors, Atlanta singer/guitarist Tinsley Ellis returns to Beale Street Friday, June 10th, with a gig at B.B. Kings Blues Club. Tinsley brings his Memphis-connected touring band to town for a show in support of his new Alligator Records release, Live  Highwayman. Expect fiery blues-rock, echoes of Southern rock, and even some gritty soul-blues slow burns from Tinsley.

Florida singer-songwriter Sam Beam, who performs under the moniker Iron & Wine, presaged the current indie-folk fad by a couple of years with widely acclaimed 2002 debut, The Creek Drank the Cradle, released by stalwart Seattle indie label Sub Pop. Less ostensibly weird than his freak-folk followers, Iron & Wine evoked not hippie-era obscurities so much as an earlier generation of lo-fi indie troubadours such as Sebadoh and the late Elliott Smith or a contemporary such as Cat Power. Iron & Wines more professionally recorded follow-up, Our Endless Numbered Days, wasnt quite as ecstatically received, but Beam still has a considerable cult. The regional contingent will get a chance to see him at Proud Larrys in Oxford on Friday, June 10th, with Band of Horses.

And if you make a trip down to Oxford, why not make a long weekend out of it? Stick around for The Heartless Bastards, wholl be playing Proud Larrys Monday, June 13th. An Ohio-based band that records for the Mississippi-based Fat Possum Records, the Heartless Bastards debut, Elevators & Stairs, is among my favorite records of the year: bare-bones, no-frills garage-/roots-rock with plainspoken lyrics and Everygirl vocals (both courtesy of frontwoman Erika Wennerstrom). Doesnt sound like much, right? Well, theres the way the music strives for so much without ever threatening to careen into Hallmark territory thats inspiring. If popular music is often an art of becoming, then this 40-something-minute slab of guitar-based self-actualization is a prime exhibit. The three-piece band also reminds me a lot of underrated 90s indie-rock minimalists Scrawl, whose best music worked similar charms.

You can read about Bobby Bare Jr. elsewhere in this issue (see Music Feature, page 37). But while I think Bares Visit Me in Music City was one of the smartest, funniest songs of 2004, Im more excited about the band hes touring with: Dallas Old 97s. Given their locale, old-timey moniker, and pedigree as onetime members of the stable on genre specialty label Bloodshot Records, the Old 97s have long been slotted as an alt-country band. (Current label New West is also ostensibly alt-country.) But the genre tag is a little misleading. The band may have been twangy when they started, but they evolved into a whipsmart, endlessly catchy straight-up rock band somewhere between the Replacements and prime Marshall Crenshaw. And in the form of frontman Rhett Miller, the band boasts a songwriter every bit the equal of Crenshaw or Replacements bard Paul Westerberg.

Miller has been in a mini-slump of late, the bands 2004 Drag It Up and his 2002 solo The Instigator merely good, not great. But for a recent three-record stretch  1997s Too Far To Care, 1999s Fight Songs, and 2001s Satellite Rides  Miller penned a group of killer songs that ranks among the periods most underrecognized bodies of work. Hey, this is a guy who opens one of his best love songs with the following lines: This is the story of Victoria Lee/She started off on Percodan and ended up with me/She lived in Berkeley til the earthquake shook her loose/She lives in Texas now where nothing ever moves. Catch the Old 97s and Bobby Bare Jr. Tuesday, June 14th, at Newbys.  